DBQ Civil Rights Essay

Throughout history, minorities have been stripped of rights and privileges by the majority because of a sense of superiority from the majority. Two examples of these groups are the women who participated in the Suffrage movement and the African Americans who were part of the civil rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s. While bot movements shared similar goals and used similar methods to achieve these goals, the two movements had many differences between them in their actions and how they achieved their goals.The Civil rights movement in the 50’s and 60’s shared many similar goals and methods with the women’s suffrage movement of the 1800’s and early 1900s.

One example is both had speakers and influential figures of both movements give speeches to during the movement. Many would gather to hear someone like Susan B Anthony speak on the hardship she faces due to the fact that she is a female (Doc. 1). This is similar to the way that many would gather to hear speeches from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement.Another similarity that the Civil Rights Movement shares with the Suffrage movement is that both would hold peaceful marches to further get their point across to others (Doc. 3b).

It is shown in the document that woman marched with signs showing why they needed suffrage. The final similarities that the two movements share is their similar goals, the Civil Rights movements sought equality for African Americans, while the Suffrage movement sought equality for women, the goal of both was to achieve equality for a certain minority group.While there were many similarities between the two movements, there were also many differences.

One of the major differences was that in the Civil Rights movement, African Americans were not just seeking the right to vote, they sought to gain the basic rights they felt every person deserved, the sought to finally not be viewed as blacks, but to have everyone be viewed as a human being. There was also much more hatred towards the African Americans in the civil rights movement than there was towards women in the suffrage movement, and they had much more direct action then the suffrage ovement (Doc. 7).While the Suffrage movement barely used direct action at all, the Civil Rights movement used direct action such as sit-ins to establish a point and to open the eyes of people and to move past the ideas of prejudice and racism, and onto the idea of unity. Another goal of the sit-ins was to stress the importance of non-violence, no matter how harshly they were treated or forcibly removed, civil rights activists participating in sit-ins they avoided violence as much as possible (Doc.

b). This is another difference between the two movements because women were not facing violence and the level of prejudice African Americans experience during and before the civil rights movement. A final difference between the two movements is that African Americans faced cruelty from the public, and when acts of cruelty were reported to law officials, nothing was done, simply because the victim was black.A specific example is the events that occurred on busses in Montgomery, Alabama and the national attention it eventually received, thanks to Rosa Parks, people like her opened others eyes through their actions, showing there is no reason someone should be forced to sit in a specific spot due to their skin tone (Doc. 5a). The civil rights movement and woman suffrage movement are two movements that have many similar goals and used similar methods to achieve these goals.

Although there are many similarities between the two, there are also many differences in the goals of each movement and how they were achieved.